i have been mostly been watching great DVD and streaming!

the whole 3D expericence has totally put me off the cinema experience

Here are some montages of the films of the year from various youtubers who have edited the clips together added some funky music and they look like the films may have been great!

What films should I have seen in 2011? or should be looking forward to in 2012?

This may look like a standard t-shirt, but it’s actually the Iron Man Mark IX suit. This latest version is much lighter than all previous versions, featuring a flexible interior with knitted cotton exterior. Unlike the Extremis version, the movement with your body does not require you to inject carbon nanotubes into your brain. The chest-mounted uni-beam is powered by photons, which it collects and then disperses when the wearer enters a dark area. For all body parts covered by the Mark IX’s new form factor, the suit provides protection from adverse weather conditions, UV rays, and temperature extremes. It is designed for up to two days of use inside Earth’s atmosphere, although after the first 12 hours of use its effectiveness is reduced. After 24 hours, it begins to act as a repulsor.

They are also doing “I HEART HEART Dr. Who” Tshirts.

But more importantly my mate unklerupert who runs the manmademovies.co.uk blog is asking people if they would want merchandise from the great Moon film – Of course we would! – vote and as the Director Duncan Jones says

There’s a CHANCE we may finally get to sell Moon posters & Collectors toys.

Basically we need to show there are at least 500 fans out there who would buy a Gerty desktop toy or a collectors Sam piece.

So go and vote and comment and you could win a MOON promo T-Shirt.

I have been using groupon in the UK ever since it was mycitydeal.:) over a year now and we have had some great treats at vastly reduced prices, my only quibble is that everyone is using it now and you have to be quick

• I have had a spa (not spar) treatment (offer details)
• Stayed at the wonderful Hurst House in Laugne, (Offer Details)
• Bought some Time Out Travel Books (offer details)
• Had a weekend away in Stow on the wold (offer details)
• MrsUW had her hair done.
• Iam even getting my MOT done with it. (offer Details)

So some varying offers – but they need to do more alcohol offers – online beer companies you know who you are – maybe getting a certain yearly beer club a bit cheaper I would sign up no sweat for that offer.

And my other passion as you know is sheds -so 20% off a certain size of shed would do wonders for the shed industry

My tips for better groupon use.

1) Sign up for multiples areas (and the National Deal) and use Gmail to Label them “groupon” so you can look at them later (not too late) – this way if any tasty hotel deals come elsewhere along then you can grab it asap

2) or Create a Tab in Igoogle (or whatever you use or maybe your mobile) and bring in the RSS feeds of the towns you are interested in.

eg Cardiff feed.

so you can see the deals as they are published and grab them straightway.

3) When you get the voucher, book straight away as you will be able to get the date you want – I have waited a few days and never end up getting the date we wanted!

4)Don’t panic buy – think about it ask your other half but the bigger deals will go quick – so if you have the money in your paypal (my prefered payment for this) then BUY BUY BUY

5) Join their recommendation program – so you earn £6 when you recommend your mates – you can use this cash to pay for more deals – so everyone is a winner!

5) Enjoy your deal!

Sign up using my ref and I get £6 from groupon or use an affiliate link where I get a small percentage of your deal price.

I had a meeting with a potential sponsor for Shed Week 2011, and they and their PR company treated us both to a great lunch in cote bistro in Soho – good food and a couple of bottles of Kasteel Cru, a French Lager I have not had before and it’s was a pleasant surprise and I have since found out you can get it in Asda.

The food was good simple French style – Scallops with lardons and Steak & Frites with Crème brûlée to follow, yes predictable but its what I fancied!

Anyway they also put us up for the night in a hotel near convent garden and got us tickets for a show, Hair……

with the broadway cast – not sure if that matters but it was a jolly romp of sex,drugs and hair but not as much as I would have thought giving the title.

Another new experience was on our return to Wales, we went off for a SPA day (not SPAR) which I bought for MrsUW birthday swimming, sauna, spa you know the sort of thing. – I know Iam going all sheddiesexual – and I had a Mud steam combi thing, Rasul Mud experience

This traditional Arabian inspired cleansing ritual combines the health enhancing properties of heat, steam and mud for a totally relaxing and skin conditioning treatment in a magical and sensory private environment with twinkling lights and aromatic vapours, whilst jets of steam keep the air warm and moist. Finally, a gentle tropical rain shower washes the mud away.

We got it very cheap from the groupon/myCitydeal Cardiff page – a bargin 60% off.

A great time was had by all.

On the harbour there were loads of gift stands and tat for sale and also a few artists doing 20 minutes portraits of people, your normal holiday souvenir type of thing – you will be glad to hear I did not get one.

But one of the artists look like England’s Football manager Fabio Capello.

In fact some of the “celebrity” caricatures, he had done were the England squad, but no David Beckham – I wonder why

If you want to be bored on the interweb, instead of coming round to my shed and looking at hundreds of slides, some of my other Crotia & Venice (we went there for a day on the ferry) photos are here.

Anyway I hope

Fabio Capello

does well in his new job

You get allocated a world cup team and you have to pick a beer from that country and drink and review it, then one person wins lots of beer from the kind sponsors, so result I thought you get to taste a great beer from another country, and drink like a local and have the chance to win some great UK beer.

Unfortunately I got Greece

That’s a bit unfair As I love Greece, the country, the people & the food but they are not the ale capital of the world.

Right where in Cardiff could you get a bottle of Greek beer, simples, Wally’s famous deli in one of the Victorian arcades – they had it in the window! £1.35 a bottle result – so not a Greek tragedy finding it.. now the downside drinking it.

I have been to Greece a few times and when you are in that beautiful country in the sun, with the water lapping against your toes after a days lazing on the beach and the smell of oregano and roast lamb in the air, a cold Mythos is the best drink you can have, I would go as far as, it’s the drink of the Gods, also it’s great with a metaxa (a greek brandy) chaser on the side.

A warm evening in the Welsh valleys is another matter, so I put the bottles in the freezer as it has to be very cold.

I was out for a pint of Brains Up & Over, while Greece played Nigeria today.. but to celebrate their two-one win thought It was time to crack open a bottle of Mythos, basically a “Greek” version of Carlsberg who own the brewery.

It’s quite malty, with a slight fizz but overall a bit tasteless but as I said perfect when you are in the lovely Ionian isles in the heat. and you need something to wet your whistle.. I don’t think Greece will go any further in the world cup but at least they can commiserate with a few bottles of their bland brew.

They do a Mythos Red, looks like a new alternative to this bland lager.. so next time you are in Greece grab me a bottle?

Mythos (Μύθος) is a light straw-colored, pilsner style lager introduced in 1997. It is available in both 330 ml and 500 ml bottles or cans. The alcohol content is 5%. It was awarded at the “2001 INTERBEER INTERNATIONAL BEER & WHISKEY COMPETITION”.

Hope frank gets over his bobbins cancer all proceeds from the song which you can buy on that itunes, goes to Cancer Research.

>> very very sad news that Frank’s creator Chris Sievey has passed away…

There are lots of inter–web campaigns to get Frank to Number one, search it

The badshepherds & shed- photo David-Angel

They are the folk band that does punk covers lead by comedian Adrian “Ade” Edmondson (yes Vyvyan) who was sweary on Vocals & ‘thrash mandolin’, the shepherds were supported by Ella Edmondson, well if you can’t give your own family a support slot when can you.. she was a good singer songwriter.

Adrian was backed up by some superb folk musicians Troy Donockley on Uilleann Pipes was brilliant and Iam sure fiddler Andy Dinan had sold his soul, also Tim Harries competes the quartet on Double Bass.

As you know Iam more a rock fan than punk (unless its about sheds) – but as I reach my middle years folk is spreading into my listening more and more, in fact I don’t think it ever went away as Iam closet Jethro Tull fan so the chance to see punk classics reworked as folk was something we could not miss.

My favourite cover was Friday Night Saturday morning the b Side of the first record I every bought Ghost Town by the Specials, but the reworkings of God save the Queen, Teenage kicks & Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue by The Ramones and Down in the Tube Station at Midnight were top class.

The only downside was that a room full of middleaged folk/punk fans at an all standing gig, cmon promoter gives us some chairs our backs could not take it.

Anyway they will be back in Wales Jun 24th, 2010 at the Muni Arts Centre in Ponty, well worth a ticket.

Buy Tickets

The other week I set up a test advert for www.readersheds.co.uk on the Guardian’s Local Cardiff website, using the addiply “platform”.

It’s the first time in the history of readersheds (9 years) that I have ever bought any online advertising, traffic to the sites has always been about Word of Shed and you great sheddies, then SEO, and side things like shedblog & flickr and now twitter (which brings some great traffic to both sites)

I have been lucky to have got some great press over the past few years running the Shed of the year competition which has help my search engine ranking with links from all sorts of high ranking sites such as boingboing and makezine and many newspaper sites (who don’t share the linklove), and of course this year having a large cash prize tends to get people interested , thanks to Cuprinol Sprayable

According to the stats I had a

I had a lot of views of my advert (according to addiply) but of course there is no way of knowing if anyone actually bothered to read it, maybe using some sort of heatmap stats may be a future feature but considering my budget not that many clicks.

I dont think it was a total waste of time/money as its was very easy to set up and was just a trial, but as my yearly marketing budget is now spent, may try something else next year.

what are your views on small time advertising on facebook/google adsense, or is word of mouth and SEO the best way to go?

of course if you are a local shed company that wishes to give this a way of targetting local ads to poeple actually intrested in the subject matter try why not use the addiply.com boxes on the righthand side of the shedblog.co.uk .. from only £5 a week, cheap I would say..

TROUSERS WITH GROWING ROOM MT040 From £12.99

LEISURE TROUSERS MT054 From £14.99

SIDE SLANT POCKET TROUSER MT004 From £12.99

The list goes on and on..